The Gutenberg Revolution

The Story of A Genius and An Invention That Changed the World

In 1450, all western Europe's books were handcopied and amounted to no more than a single modern library. By 1500 they were printed and numbered in their millions. Printing made possible the development of modern science and literature, and the political shift from statelets to nations. It brought about the biggest changes in human culture since the invention of the alphabet itself.

The man responsible was Johann Gutenberg, born in 1400 in Mainz, Germany. John Man explains how this technical genius, whose research into printing was funded by wealthy sponsors, struggled against a background of plague, religious upheaval and legal battles to bring his remarkable invention to light. Once the secret of printing got out, the world would never be the same again.

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The Gutenberg Revolution --- by --- John Man.
When it comes to printing with moveable type, John Gutenberg and fifteenth century socio-economic conditions in middle Europe, Man must be your go-to guy. As a historian he must join the front ranks of those practitioners of his craft who make history not just palatable but downright appetising. This volume concerns itself not so much with actual nuts and bolts of the evolution of printing with moveable type, that’s something considered in a sister volume which very competently covers that aspect of printing, but rather with the politics, both on a small scale and the large scale that surrounds this invention. It connects the sale of indulgences to the Avignon papacy to relics to crusades to competing Garman states to the rise of Martin Luther. Clearly this innovation did not occur in a European vacuum and clearly this invention did appear without its consequences.
John Man is an accomplished historian, an accomplished writer and one who manages to yoke both of these skills together to produce a very readable book.
It has a very helpful bibliography and index.